Ask HN: Why does page 2 of HN have discussions from 2 years ago? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why does page 2 of HN have discussions from 2 years ago?

36 pointsacak14 comments

Here is a screenshot page 2 of HN's current stories as of today (May 25th, 2012) 11:00 PM CST:

http://i.imgur.com/5u2Q6.png

Discussions # 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42 and 56 on page 2 are from several days ago (some even 2+ years old).

What kind of ranking algorithm is being applied? Is there some kind of personalization of stories?

And here's one as of 11:08 PM CST:

http://imgur.com/515ki

Was there some switch announced on the purpose of the More link on the HN front page?

View on HN

A bug. Things should improve now.

Fixing bugs at 11pm on a Friday night? True hackerism.

edit: Christ, downvotes? I meant that sincerely. It's not like I'm not up at midnight coding myself. Sheesh.

What was the nature of the bug?

I hope the urge to fix this was still as strong in your as it is whenever someone reports a bug in something I'm responsible for.

PG you're so fucking cool.

I am fairly new here but I think aimless fanboyism is frowned upon here.

I also frown upon aimless recital of the "rules" of what's frowned upon "these here parts".

No. It's not aimless. HN is a place to share links and discuss things that hackers would find interesting. It's a carefully run community, and we try to keep in cordial and respectful, all while being entirely relevant.

Probably the server was restarted. Odd things tend to happen when things aren't cached as expected.

I experience it often on the ask page.

Since the old threads often have a meaningful number of upvotes and can address topics in which I am interested, sometimes find these threads relevant.

It's not a bug, it's not a feature, it's a side effect.

Bottom of page 1 had a year-old story a couple days ago, too. Definitely interesting and unusual.

Only on HN will people think a bug that has appeared several times is an unannounced feature.

I had noticed that stories where lasting several days in the front page. I thought that some kind of weird traffic plumbeting was happening.

It is an old bug or a recent change that caused this?

Check your ping time. Try a traceroute.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com